Unfinished Drabbles
by Wild Iris
Summary: Various drabbles featuring scenes from Middle Earth. Featuring Boromir, Glorfindel, Hurin, Denethor, Elrond, Legolas, Aragorn, Gimli, Thranduil, Celebrimbor, Bilbo, Faramir, Elboron. Some Silm references.
1. Calling: the Horn

**Calling (the Horn)**

Two calls that answered one another, as easy as confidences exchanged at a father's knee. We sounded on a hunt across the plain, as the hare burst from the long grass; we rang at some great tournament arranged to fit an heir for battle. As a boy, newly made a man, carolled his exuberance from the towers of the city, a quiet counterpoint welcomed his joy.

This note is emptied, now; a broken reed discarded in the waters. Yet the other answers still. It calls and calls. It will not let this echo fade until we hunt once more together.

  
_(In response to a challenge at the lotr100 LiveJournal community - to write as an object of Middle-earth.)_


	2. Untitled: Glorfindel

**Untitled (Glorfindel)**

The stranger pledges fealty to the heir of his king.

He is a puzzle to those that see him; his accent slants their words, and he is stern and golden like the sun. He has come as from long sleep, in the service of defiance so fierce it cannot spend itself in sleep. Yet he yields his sword gladly to his unproven lord. The watchers cannot know that having served mistaken pride makes it easy to embrace Elrond Peredhel.

A kiss, laid on his brow, seals it. The stranger receives back his sword and his name, antique devices once more acknowledged.

  
_(A birthday drabble for LOTR Lover.)_


	3. Untitled: Mirkwood

**Untitled (Mirkwood)**

The child has a secret place in the wood: a heart of trees, where through the spring a knot of honeysuckle opens like his own star.

Later, when the air turns chill, he is bidden not to go there. When he goes nonetheless, he sees broken leaves; blood is on the ground, and a strange, splayed outline hoisted in the tallest tree.

He stands and sobs, and hears the strain of the winter wind. Someone picks him up and carries him away, and he somehow knows that the flowers are over, and that his people will never return to this place.


	4. Day Shall Come Again: Hurin

**Day Shall Come Again (Hurin Thalion)**

And there is no more battle, but where he stands; no more light but his helm in that river of dusk. He counts strokes: two score, three score. Each time his blade finds flesh, each moment of respite for those that flee, he cries aloud in the tongue of the Eldar: _Aurë entuluva!_

Three score and ten. There are too many hands on him, a terrible weight; and he falls, and the Orcs fall over him like night. And then he feels terror, for instead of a blow, ropes and shackles come. And he understands that his avowal is betrayed.

  
_(Birthday drabble for Mir_Noldoris.)_

  
Neige: I've never written anything with Glorfindel before, and I'm delighted that it pleased a Glorfindel fan.

Erestor: Another Glorfindel fan - it's great to get those comments, as it was the first time I had really considered that Elf.

Soledad: I think FF.net ate its copy of your reviews, but thank you so much for taking the time to comment on all three drabbles.


	5. Reach: Denethor

**Reach (Denethor)**

Hastening to the armsmaster for a report on my second-born son, I caught sight of the boy himself on the wall above. "Faramir! What are you doing?" Spitting over the parapet, I could see, as every yokel in the city had done before him.

He stepped back. "Bor'mir said I could not hit the enemy from here." I waited. He lifted his eyes. "I thought I could."

Those grief-grey eyes, the straight set of the jaw — like his mother… like his brother.

"You need a weapon with a longer reach," I said.

I glanced below. Yes, the armsmaster still waited.

  
_(Belated birthday drabble for Altariel, who asked for Denethor and Faramir being at least 'functional' together.)_

  
**Neige**: Húrin is one of my favourite Men, and he certainly is tragic - melodramatically so, even. Thanks for commenting on the representation of the characters in these drabbles. I'm no Tolkien expert, so it's great when a fan says I 'got' one.

**Doegred**: Thanks for that very nice review. Yes, poor Húrin; though his brother's family becomes the great house of Men, his own is ruined.


	6. Messengers: Elrond

**Messengers (Elrond)**

I was a child when the star appeared, in the wild days of rumour. Someone said to me: _it is your father, young one; he left as the herald of the Slain, and he is returned as the herald of the Valar_.

I knew it for truth. I spoke my hopes to Eärendil in the secret places of the night.

I knew it for falsehood, when my brother died. The star was a ball of fire, and my father at the bottom of the sea.

For no one who had seen those legends wrought had returned to tell the truth of them in Ennor.

Until now.

  
_(Another birthday drabble, this one for paranoidangel and nutterzoi who both asked for Elrond.)_

  
**Willow-41z**: Many thanks for reviewing. I appreciate your comment on 'every word' fitting, as that's obviously a big concern when trying to write a drabble. Re. the 'hanging': the image I had in mind was of the corpse of a spider being displayed in the trees as a warning to others, not of anyone being executed by hanging - is that what you thought? I hadn't realized before that it was ambiguous. Thanks - you've given me something to think about!


	7. In a Garden in Ithilien: Legolas

**In a Garden in Ithilien**

There is the little prince. He has been to visit the tallest beech, and he is curled asleep beneath it. Fond child, to sleep in the afternoon sun – but the grandsire tree has screened his bed as if he were one of the flowers of our planting.

I kneel. "Elboron – "

No; I shall not move him hence.

I look up into the spire of leaves that is soaked in faded golden light. "I entreat you, my lord: love these Men with all your strength, for it will never be in their power to love you as do we."

* * *

_(Another birthday drabble from the HASA forums: for Gwynnyd, Avon and Lady Aranel, all of whom requested Legolas and two of whom suggested Faramir as well.)_**Neige**: I can't claim all the credit for non-abusive Denethor, as he was part of the drabble challenge, but I'm glad you liked him. Thanks for reviewing yet again. I don't mind if you repeat yourself - repeating is fun, when it's praise :)

**erunyauve**: It took me a long time to get interested in drabbles. I think your comparison with haiku is a good one - both are forms that take some getting used to, and both require a delicate balance of detail to work properly. Thanks for reviewing. I hadn't realized the bit about Glorfindel's name was actually historical :)

**Nerina Dragonstongue**: Thanks so much for reviewing. 'Everything fits' is about the best comment on a short form that I could hope for. Glad you enjoyed them.

**Soledad**: I love to get multiple reviews, and I thank you especially for repeating one of those that got lost before. For non-evil Denethor, you can thank Altariel as well :)


	8. Aglarond: Legolas

**Aglarond (Legolas)**

You said, _Are your lord's halls not fair?_ And yes, they are as fair as craft can make them, with their carved chaplets of stone. But it is an elegance that endeavours to conceal their nature, not to celebrate it.

Here, stone has husbanded a garden. Such a garden as grew before Anor rose: white branches and gold-veined saplings, graceful as a dancer's arms. I stand within the garden; I hear the echo of the living waters that have shaped it.

Here, stone speaks where oak and beech are quiet; and you, my friend, have words, and I have none.

* * *

_(For the 'Perspective' challenge at the lotr100 LiveJournal community.)_**Neige**: You are a magnificently loyal reviewer - thank you! There are a few more trees for you to hug in this one. 


	9. A Commission of Beacons

**A Commission of Beacons**

Fire burns once, and its fuel must be replenished. So the villagers insisted when we commandeered their wood. We sympathized, for we were cold ourselves, wishing we were stationed anywhere but this mountain hamlet with its head in the snows.

When the signal came I found that we were still alert, still soldiers. We climbed the trail at a run, shielded the torch with our bare hands as the wind tore at the flame. I realized that these cruel, clear heights were our allies.

Fire burns once. But that fire leapt from peak to peak, keeping itself alight by burning.

* * *

_(For the 'Perspective' challenge at the lotr100 LiveJournal community.)_**Karri**: Thanks so much for those lovely comments. I don't think I've ever got a sniff before. That must be a good sign! 


	10. Tokens: Aragorn

**Tokens (Aragorn)**

Still deliberating Elrond's tale of bloodlines and kingdoms, he rises in the night to look again at those things with which he has been gifted.

These are the appointed tokens of his manhood. He sees a shattered blade that should have been taken for its metal long since. A ring that remembers an alliance of dead men. A claim to a throne already occupied, passed from father to son like some useless curio: a bankrupt coat of arms, an empty sheath.

He wonders if such antiquities will ever gain new meaning, and senses that it will only be in violence.

* * *

_(Birthday drabble for Gwynnyd, who asked for pre-War Aragorn.)_**Karri**: I'd glad you liked Legolas; it's fun to write about Elven perceptions, isn't it?. And I totally agree about the beacons scene - probably not just my favourite in _RotK_, but one of my favourite scenes of any film. Thanks again for reviewing!

**Neige**: Pleased you like the compliment, and I promise you that it is _not_ moral blackmail to keep you reviewing :). Probably the Glittering Caves didn't actually look anything like I imagined. I was thinking of the stalagmites at Cheddar Gorge, which is the only famous cave I've seen, and it seemed of course that they would remind Legolas of trees.


	11. Events: Aragorn

**Events(Aragorn)**

I talk almost for my own ears. Those matters, half put by, that have re-awakened since I returned to the house of Elrond. The long trial of Númenor, the frailty of Isildur, my father's death and the remnant that is our claim.

And Legolas, who sits still against an ash-trunk, lifts his head. His face within the hood might be that of a spotless youth, and yet he says, as if I related the events of yestereve, "I remember".

It is not only I for whom this history has resonance; I do not talk to myself, but to my friend.

* * *

_(Birthday drabble for Avon, who requested Aragorn and Legolas friendship. A companion piece to 'Tokens', posted previously.)_

**Neige**: I hope Aragorn was satisfactory, when he finally turned up. You get some more of him here, but no Anduríl, unfortunately :)


	12. Craft: Gimli

**Craft (Gimli)**

My axe and I hewed long together elsewhere. We split the grey flesh that was broken stone in its fall; left behind a field of statues grotesquely stillborn. No lamp came to alter those tints or to distinguish the finer moulding from the rough.

Here, in what we make the home of our renewal, we give our skill to irregularities that are thirsty and cool. We part the veins of limestone and shale, and their sinews tauten, and they stir with form.

My axe and I cut stone, and see it step out into the flux of the already living.

* * *

**Sunoko**: Many thanks for your review. I hope you weren't really putting your own drabbles down, but I'm delighted that you liked these.

**Ainaechoiriel**: It's lovely to have such a small thing recognized for an award - thank you!

**Neige**: Well, I could conceive of 'too much Aragorn', but 200 words of him doesn't seem an unreasonable amount :). Thanks again for your friendly and generous comments.

**Ancient Scribe**: Glad you enjoyed these drabbles, and it was lovely to get a bunch of comments together. I appreciate what you said about selection of detail and leaving some things ambiguous. I think drabble-writing is a bit like poetry in that way.


	13. Honour: Thranduil

**Honour (Thranduil)**

The knife's silver-shod hilt is old Dale-work, and after the custom of Men, it has two sockets to receive gems as trophies of victory. These there has been no opportunity to fill. But what of it, should the lords in Imladris observe it? Would they mistake this for the weapon of an untried youth? It has been well employed since the winter I girded it on him. We are Wood-elves, and our foes do not carry treasure. We are Grey-elves, and our house has never gone to war for jewels, nor will it ever. We learned that vanity long past.

* * *

_Birthday drabble for Arandil, from the HASA Birthday Cards forum._

**Ancient Scribe**: Many thanks again for your detailed reviews. I'm glad you liked the Gimli drabble, as I was unsure whether it worked as I'd hoped. It was nice to show a bit of his poetic side!


	14. Abiding: Legolas

**Abiding**

_- They mourn for you the way they can._ (Mark Strand)

Was Lady Nerdanel the last who understood? Often she visited you, lifting the tools of the forge, exchanging the secrets of smithcraft. It lightened her loneliness. And when the tools were laid away, and the fire went out, she and I shared our grief. Silently together, while outside there was song, union and reunion.

So many years. And finally she, too, is gone from here; her love has been returned to her. For the Eldar, there is an end to durance in the shades, however long they must wait. And now alone here I continue not to wait for you.

* * *

_Inspired by the 'mourning' challenge at the tolkienweekly LJ community, and by Saturn's Hikari's review here._

**Archaic Scribe**: Thanks for your review. The period I had in mind for the Thranduil drabble was Legolas' journey to Rivendell in _LotR_, but there's nothing in it specific to that, so it could fit a bunch of occasions. Thranduil is excused from being tempted by Smaug's treasure since he was a lot less eager to fight over it than the others :)

**Neige**: Finished, my Unfinished Drabbles? Never :) Thanks for your perceptive interpretation of the Thranduil drabble. Silmaril references, certainly.

**Saturn's Hikari**: Thank you for those lovely comments. The Legolas drabbles are some of my favourites, too. As for L/G friendship - do you like this one?

**Linaeve**: Thank you - for multiple reviews. And yes, another spot-on intepretation of the Thranduil drabble :)

**Soledad**: I think Gimli must have had a poetic side to get so sentimental over Galadriel's hair :). And of course Thranduil is not greedy! If Tolkien had lived to see revisionist medieval history, he'd know that good kings are not greedy kings.

**Avon**: Thanks for the grammar call! I think I've identified one of the problems and fixed it. You have sharper eyes than I do :)


	15. Balance: Elrond

**Balance**

We stood above the lake of fire, and I saw the reason that had brought us there blown out.

Was it desire or vengeance most that masked your eyes? I think they had become as one to you. Too late I understood that ring and sword had moulded to your familiar hand.

You would take what you wanted, for you deemed your loss and your necessity greater than ours. And I could not prevent you, for the power of action was already yours. And I scarce had strength to draw more words and see them break against your heart.

_ – "Isildur!"_

* * *

**Nerina Dragonstongue**: It really gave me a boost when you wrote that you read these drabbles regularly. Thank you! 


	16. Maidens of Dale

**Maidens of Dale**

At the cut straw, it was not real. At the midwife's fingers, it was not real.

And now the birds are shrieking southward. Now the wind is hot. Now the man and woman who have her arms tremble as they thrust her over the cobbles. And she is outside the gate, her feet numb on the bare rock.

Behind, she hears them scatter into doorways.

Her hands are only loosely bound, but there is nowhere to climb to save the spine of blackened granite curving up into the mountain.

And now a shadow limned in fire tears open the sky.

* * *

'Later Smaug used to... come by night to Dale, and carry away people, especially maidens, to eat...' _The Hobbit_, ch 1. 


	17. Craft II: Celebrimbor

**Craft (II)**

His craft is above all. Above his sire and the oath of Fëanor, rule and dynasties, all worldly bonds of fellowship. The art of gold is his centre: as fluent as speech and as intricate as making love.

He lives to forge beauty, and beauty is become that which he makes.

None knows better the power of a hammer-blow, of a jewel placed thus-wise. His knowledge rouses greed, but greed is not of him.

And he shall not lament the dust and ash that will be wrought of Eregion, for better the forge lie cold than the making be undone.

* * *

_(Belated birthday drabble for erunyauve.)_

**Nerina Dragonstongue**: Thanks for your review! No doubt Tolkien didn't intend for there to be sacrifices to Smaug g , but it struck me that if the dragon especially liked maidens, then the townsfolk could do some damage-control by supplying them. It's the Minotaur story, basically.   
I realize that the first line was a bit obscure. 'Cut straw' was meant to be a reference to drawing lots. 'Midwife's fingers' referred to an examination to confirm that the girl was a virgin - not that Smaug would probably have been able to tell the difference, but it fitted the virgin sacrifice myths.

**Neige**: No, the sacrifice thing probably wasn't what Tolkien had in mind - although since the Lake-men were mostly abject cowards when it came to Smaug, who knows :). Thanks for commenting on Elrond and Isildur. I'd worried about that one being too out of character for E.

**Saturn's Hikari**: Wow, three at once! Thank you. I'm delighted my drabble made you cry (in a good way, I hope). I'm glad they work as glimpses into character. That's one of the nice things about trying to write them.


	18. Gift Economy: Bilbo

**Gift Economy**

There are some things money can't buy, and Bilbo had soon realised that the acquisition of vast wealth didn't help him to find good Yuletide gifts for his cousin Lobelia. That would have required a fundamental change of temperament on her part or his. He had tried irony (a silver spoon-holder), thinking outside the box (a trip to Michel Delving's most exclusive grooming establishment), and some incomprehensible article that was described as the latest feminine fad of the season. Finally he gave up, and settled for the universal standby of handkerchiefs. He gave up because he realised that buying token gifts for Lobelia brought him as little pleasure as it apparently brought her.

Why make a pother about Lobelia, he thought, when he could take care of her by a yearly retainer to the haberdasher. Instead, he could spend the days of Foreyule ensconced by his own fireside, with a nice glass of wine and a catalogue from that freshly revived toy market in Dale. Flipping through the brightly illuminated pages, deliberating the merits of clockwork soldiers with velvet tunics against gilded dragons that breathed real smoke, Bilbo discovered a far more enjoyable use for his riches: surprising his favourite nephew.

* * *

_(Double drabble for Advent.)_

Thanks to all reviewers. I haven't written responses as the time lag between posts has been so great.


	19. Preparation: Elboron

**Preparation**

The little prince of Ithilien turns slowly under the laden pines. He has long known that creatures called Orcs broke that trunk now splinted with a metal band. Since the afternoon, wandering among the ropes and ladders, he also knows that the bronze lanterns spaced along the branches are the work of Elves, and that the gilded balls and jewel-stuck comets are the work of Dwarves. Which, contemplated, prompts him to spread his sticky hands wide and ask – "What did _we_ do?"

And his mother, breath catching and laughing at once, pulls him back into the lights of her golden hair.


	20. Untitled: Denethor

**Untitled**

"What can you see?"

"Primarily, the site of another of the stones," his father says.

"Where are the other stones?"

"Most are lost," his father explains. "But our enemy holds the stone that was formerly of Minas Ithil."

He does not see the excitement in this at all. Watching the dark, smoky tower across the plain sounds far less agreeable than watching comets through his new scrying-glass.

"So," he ventures, "what use is it?"

His father finishes the lesson then and says, "You will understand when you are older" – the reply grown-ups give in answer to many of Denethor's questions.


	21. All Roads: Faramir

**All Roads**

My brother, once I followed the way you had trodden through the shoulder-high wheatfields, and I jumped from one of your broad footprints to another through the snow. Save for the signposts I found in my tutors and my books, there was no path I followed that you had not broken.

And brother, though I loved you, it was not always my own will that made me follow you. And this path was mastered by you too: the one that flings itself from the gate into the masking smoke. You failed me, brother. You failed to lead me into safety.


	22. Circle: Thranduil

**Circle**

With what care must the pyre have been tended: each bough laid with attention to the structure of the whole, each leaf and flower of ash reverently gathered and borne away. Beneath the oaks, the charred ground formed an almost perfect circle, a pool reflecting nothing but a starless sky.

Thranduil broke the circle by stepping into it. He gazed at the black earth and untrodden frost, the old trees clipped so that fire long cold would not hinder them. "Here we will hold our feast," he said. "Gather the people; bring pine and apple wood; bring wine; bring music."


	23. Speech: Ents

**Speech**

In the forest was no written book, but as many histories as filled the libraries of men were lodged in ring and root. Passed through the water, earth and air, the stories spread among them and endured. And none was learned so young as that of their awakening: how the bringer-of-heat had returned across the steep ground, how the sapling figure, crowned in gold, had laid her hand against the elder's flank as the dawn light struck it; and how the first word formed in the splitting of bark had given thanks, and the second had discovered his own name.


	24. Fortune: Faramir

_(Birthday drabble for Altariel.)_

**Fortune**

His father imparted the old way of reading the stars; the configurations that bespoke victory. He learned with will, but too often the smoke went up, and the sky was hidden.

And as he grew, he put aside omens for a sharp edge, and thought only that a starless night was the better to prepare an ambush.

This night, war is done; the sky is dark with ordinary rain; the room familiar with the lamps unlit. And he knows her, still not fully seen, full and bright and high and wanted: the sign that had always blazed within that cloud.


	25. Nar

**Nár**

Even now, I would write of its making. I would render my memory of the jewel into the permitted tongue, and tell how it started from the forge as though a star was borne through fire into the hands of those that loved them; to show it is for beauty first that all such things are done.

But I stall at the first column, knowing the impossibility of that one word, _fire_. Once, we understood by that the Valar's greatest gift, to be our own creators after their example. Here, in our language of this land, it would signify destruction.


End file.
